CHAPTER 33
POPPY
The sudden bang of the door crashing was like a clap of thunder as Casteel’s upper body whipped around.
He shifted to the side, shielding as much of me as possible. Well, he was doing the best he could since my leg was still curled around his waist, above his ass—hisbareass.
Primal essence poured out of him, drenching the air and stirring the eather inside me as his flesh rapidly cooled. And it waseverypart of him, including his thick length, that was still very muchinsideme. The contrast of heat and coolness sent a very inappropriate dart of pleasure through me.
“Put the fangs away,” came Reaver’s familiar dry, gravelly voice. My eyes went even wider.
A wholly different kind of heat infused my skin then. While he’d been nude in my presence more times than I cared to recount, I wasn’t just naked.Wewere naked. And Casteel’s cock was now prodding my thigh, still—
Okay, I didn’t need to think about that. Instead, I should have been wondering if it was possible to will myselfintothe bed.
Casteel let out a low, guttural snarl of warning that raised the tiny hairs on my arms. The sound snapped me from my haze of desire. I’d only heard him make a noise like that twice before.Once when he was on the verge of bloodlust and then again when he was lost to the madness of hunger.
But this sound?
It was different.
The deep growl continued, rumbling from Casteel as his fury gathered, cold and acidic, in the back of my throat. It conjured up images of smoke and ice. I’d heard that inmyvoice a few times—the ancient, unfettered power—but I’d never heard it in his before.
I swallowed, my throat dry. “Reaver? You need to leave.”
“Can’t do that.”
Casteel’s flesh hardened under my palm, feeling like cold granite as deep-gray shadows appeared, gliding along the flesh of his back and over his shoulder, widening as some of them disappeared under my hand. Shadows streaked with faint strands of crimson began to swell with the eather in me, stoking my primal instinct. It warned of a very real threat to one’s life.
Namely, Reaver’s.
Crimson-streaked black shadows continued to spread, and I felt the eather gathering in Casteel. The shadows slipped into the air around him—no, not shadows.Primal mistseeped from him, churning and thickening as it rolled across the rumpled blankets. My heart lurched as my wide gaze swung to his profile. Seeds of panic started to take root in my chest as those swirling tendrils of midnight crested the hard line of his jaw.
Instinct screamed that he no longer saw the draken as a friend or even a reluctant ally who’d once helped free him—just like when we’d been in New Haven, and he’d reacted this way to Kieran. He saw him as a threat.
To me.
And while Casteel normally wouldn’t respond all that well to being interrupted during such an intimate embrace,thiswasn’t anormal reaction for him. It was the eather—the darker, deadlier energy I sensed when he drank from me.
And I knew beyond a doubt that Casteel was about to attack. And as a true Primal of Death, even a newly Ascended one, he could and would kill Reaver.
I quickly thought about something happy. It wasn’t hard. Immediately, the thought of our time in the lilac-filled caverns of Spessa’s End came to mind. “It’s okay,” I said, focusing on him and projecting my emotions—how being there had calmed me—through the eather to him as I gently grasped the nape of his neck. I started to speak, but something prickled against my palm. Something soft. It reminded me of hair. Orfur.
What the…?
The Primal mist suddenly vanished, and the eather drenching the chamber eased. I started to relax as I lifted my hand.
Tiny specks of silver light erupted all over Casteel’s golden-bronze skin. “Cas—?”
I shouted as his jaw snapped out of its socket with a crack and his canines jutted forward, thickening and lengthening.
What in the actual—?
Fear punched through me as I reached for him, having no idea what was happening. His back bowed, and the sound of the sheets tearing snapped my gaze down. His palms—his fingernails. They had sharpened. My head snapped up as I heard his joints popping. And then I knew what was happening.
Casteel…
Was…shifting.
